Society

As Democrats reflect on the 2024 election, talking about the "planetary emergency" is out, and "cheap energy" is in.

The neo-reactionary dream meets the law of the strong.

A case study in how sophisticated cowards attack truth-tellers while serving power

Ten walking-minutes from where I live in Oslo, Norway, there's a large pool that opened at the start of this year. I love this pool; I wa...

I had had my head down all day working when I heard them shooting the hell out of the place over at the gun range up the hill. Which is how I knew there must have been a bad one earlier.  They do this every single time. Preparing for a

A meditation on Vlad Vexler's thoughts on Michael Ignatieff's essay

From the Wilderness of a Recovering Technocrat

With just $800 in basic equipment, researchers found a stunning variety of data—including thousands of T-Mobile users’ calls and texts and even US military communications—sent by satellites unencrypted.

Internet of Lying Things; Dieselgate for TVs; Apple kills Chinese RSS readers.

In 'The American Slave Coast: A History of the Slave-Breeding Industry,' Ned and Constance Sublette offer a radical re-interpretation of American history. It’s brutal and uncompromising, and, for better or worse, it’s how we should understand the country.

My syllabus is a mess of half-remembered intentions. I re-use icebreakers that I know don’t work. I forget to grade the first assignment until Week Four. I write emails that begin with “So sorry for the delay!” and I mean it. I use “This reminded me of something I once read—” as a stall tactic. I say “I don’t know” more times than I should. I also say “I love that” when I don’t. Because I want to encourage them. Because I do love that they showed up. Because showing up is a miracle.

As AI asserts its power to shape social evolution, regulation is decried as ‘state control’ rather than the expression of our collective will

“Winning” means prioritizing independence from outside influence over being right.

Why choosing what we want is not a technical problem requiring expert solution

Inside Trump’s second term, Silicon Valley’s surrender, and the moral awakening that followed.

Keeping the tent open, the light on, and the work honest

Understanding How People Choose to Become Worse Than They Could Be

The Democratic Party’s problem isn’t which faction dominates—it’s that both factions think domination by experts is how democracy works

Readers: I’ve done a very generous “free” portion of this newsletter, but I do recommend paying for premium to get the in-depth analysis underpinning the intro. That being said, I want as many people as possible to get the general feel for this piece. Things are insane, and it’

Microdemocracy offers a concrete path beyond capitalism by promoting direct local participation in decision-making. It opposes multiple systems of domination and social enclosure by restoring real …

Yesterday I asked my subscribers a simple question: What are you most worried about in your life right now?

Here are just five of the (many) ways that women have powered the global economy from the Stone Age to the present day.

How austerity and privatization have killed state capacity

If futarchy ends up as successful as I hope, the world will have to choose explicit ex-post-measurable goals to assign to their governments, and political talk and activism will turn to focus more on fighting over such goals.

Why Defending the Founders’ Republic Requires Taxing the Rich, Breaking Up Monopolies, and Calling the Bluff of Power

In a 2014 preface for his 1978 book The Ohlone Way, a description of how the indigenous peoples of California’s Bay Area lived before Europeans arrived, Malcolm Margolin shared a list of what he thought constituted a healthy society: Sustainable re